Re: To the American engineering industry in general and to Mr. Briggs & Mr. Stratton in particular.

I have always worked on the basis that the 'rule of thumb' was that the width of the thumb was approximately 1". Works for me. I don't have big hands but my thumb joint to tip measures up as 1.5".

My body is much better suited to imperial measurements than metric. Not only 1" thumb but 1 foot feet, 1 yard stride and 1 fathom for outspread arms.

These basic measurements date back to when the average person was rather smaller than now.

The last one must be useful on those occasions when you want to measure one fathom's depth by floating on your side! That must be the first time I have seen "1 foot feet" used in a sentence.

Nevertheless both foot and fathom have their roots in human feet and arms width. Inch was borrowed from the Latin for a twelfth part and a yard has been 3 feet since the 14th century.

Horizontal arms outstretched fathoms are used to measure the rope or chain to a sounding line or anchor, or for demonstrating the size of the huge fish that got away.

Ditto, to all of that. Imperial measures all over and none of those funny furrin nonsense things. Napoleon can shove it.

Imperial for day to day human scale measurements or measurements that usefully need to be easily divided into 3s and 4s, etc.; metric for technical calculations.

SteveW